I’ll never forget putting on my little black suit and racing down the stairs only to have my sister grab my arm and softly whisper, “Don’t wake up Daddy.” You see, it was Sunday and we were all going to church except Daddy, but of course it wasn’t just on Sunday. It was every day that he was drunk and missed out on family time. Are those the memories you’d like to leave your loved ones?
Gone are the Sunday meals. The family gathering around for family time or just the love and happiness we all felt during the good days. Replacing those are the memories of my mother broken and beaten on the floor and my father staggering out the door for the last time in my life. Are those the memories you want your loved ones to have of you and their life at home?
You see, we’ve got alcohol in our stores, our restaurants, our homes, and even in the cars that drive our streets. So you see, we have plenty of beer throughout the city to let you stock up for the weekend.
My letter is not to make drinking people think I’m trampling on whatever rights they have to drink, but it is a letter from a man with a lost child in his heart who grew up without a father and learned himself that drinking hid pain. It took years for me to realize that it was destroying my life as well as my family’s.
Sundays should be more than “just another day,” as many people say. When I was that child it was a day of going to church. A day to spend with family and friends. Now after an almost-50-year battle with my feelings, I’m proud to say at I am one of the many filling the pews at Lighthouse Church listening to the words of Pastor Fred Sanatana. Once again, there is singing in my heart where before there was the pain and emptiness of the destruction alcohol caused.
Please, we need to fill our churches and hold our loved ones close. We need to have more family time. We need to visit our loved ones int he nursing homes or hospitals; we need to visit the grave sites and forgive the ones who may have caused us pain.
You see, this has nothing to do with trampling on anyone’s rights, or stopping someone from doing what they want. This isn’t about making a law that Sunday is special; this is about family values and spending your time with your loved ones that will give them a life and give thanks for many things we have. And to pray for the many who suffer and don’t have.
If I have reached one person, I pray it’s to the deciding voter who stops the sale of alcohol on Sundays. God bless each and every one of you. May your drink on Sunday be of God filling your glass with the spirit of the Lord.
Richard Egeland, Fort Oglethorpe
You see in a vote such as this, if it passes a MAJORITY wants it, if it doesn't then the MAJORITY doesn't.
I am a church going man myself, and was raised to be one. I always attended with my mother. Never did my father or siblings go with us. They weren't drunk, or hungover, they simply just didn't go or were at work. I had a great childhood, and great father, who was married to my mother until the day she died. Hasn't anyone else read or watched the news lately and noticed that a preacher and preacher's wife (who is also a preacher's daughter) have been indited on charges for stealing money from a disabled relative.
You see, just because one isn't in the church building every time the doors are open, doesn't make them a bad person, parent or spouse; and just because one might be in the building every day of the week, doesn't mean that they ARE a good person, parent, or spouse.
If someone wants to buy alcohol on Sunday, that SHOULD be their right, if they don't that IS their right. Just because people are allowed to buy, don't meant that they ARE going to buy. Just like one anti-Sunday sale's poster on here said, you can stock up as it is, so if someone wants to drink on Sunday now they can, so if they want it, NOTHING is going to stop them. If they want to drink and drive one Sunday and share the road with Ma & Pa Kettle, though illegal, guess what, they're going to! The roads will be no more safer now than if the Sunday sales go through.
"I could list statistics here on how alcohol impacts our communities and ruins lives, but you could care less."
It's not a matter of caring about any of that nor not; it's a matter of that having ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the issue on the table. I don't throw around the phrase "non sequitur" for my health. Maybe you should look it up.
"Was it last week or the week before that almost every arrest listed in the paper for Catoosa county was for underage consumption of alcohol? Not everyone drinks responsibly."
Newsflash 2: Underage consumption of alcohol is completely illegal. It's illegal on Sunday. It's illegal every other day. It's illegal everywhere.
And, again, your assertion that those who favor freedom for everyone over a pointless rule that does nothing but create legal hassles for a certain segment of law-abiding citizens somehow equals a "few whinners [sic] that expect their rights over the rights of the majority" is absolutely asinine.
Whatever, there will always be the few whinners that expect their rights over the rights of the majority.
NG - If you want to drink during "the game" on Sundays, is your mind too clouded with alcohol on Saturday to plan for Sunday? If so, maybe you should give up alcohol all together.
No one, NO ONE is saying you can't drink on Sunday, thats your choice. The community is just asking that you use your brain to plan ahead.
I could list statistics here on how alcohol impacts our communities and ruins lives, but you could care less. Was it last week or the week before that almost every arrest listed in the paper for Catoosa county was for underage consumption of alcohol?
Not everyone drinks responsibly.
CL2 - I have to hand it to you for your tireless campaign, often with great tolerance, in responding to the flood of right-wing memesters that haunt this forum. You give deference to those who can debate politely and with reason (a rarity here) but suffer not the fools who time and again parrot the tired "You liberals and your evil policy failures are the ruin of this great nation..." line of O'Limbannity & Co. They would do well to study classic liberalism and realize it as a particularly nuanced ideology with which they probably would not disagree much. That would, of course, be more difficult than absorbing diatribes of division from the aforementioned infohacks of corporate media, but we can always hope that perhaps they'll change.
Except, of course, I've neither tramped on anyone's rights, nor suggested anyone else do so.
To state the really, really obvious, driving under the influence is already illegal. It's illegal on Sunday. It's illegal on every other day of the week. It's illegal everywhere, and for all time, so we can remove that from any further consideration right here.
You've joined everyone else who has spoken, here, in favor of a ban in offering up absolutely nothing in support of your own argument except a non sequitur. Your own big "argument" for banning alcohol sales on Sunday is that law-abiding people drive on Sunday, therefore law-abiding citizens should be prevented from buying alcohol. Phrased differently, bird-nests should be banned because some people shower less frequently than others, and anyone who objects to that "reasoning" is trampling on the rights of people who shower less frequently. You want to know why your thoughts, in this vein, aren't valued? It's because they aren't thoughts at all.
However, Sunday is a day when people that don't drive any other day of the week are out driving. Many are elderly with slower reaction time. Also entire families are in a single car together in record numbers. Its not asking a lot to one day of the week keep your drinking to home.
I think giving drinkers 6 days a week and everyone else one day a week is more than generous.
However, do not be surprised when it happens. I've lived in 1 dry county and three that didn't allow sales on Sunday. In each county the laws changed and DUI's went up.
I'm tired of moving, I wish the rights of "all" people mattered to classicliberal2. But no, the desire of many is to tramp on the rights of anyone that dare disagree with them on anything.
What always made America great was the fact that all thoughts were valued. America is dying, and boorish people like classicliberal2 have their hands around her throat.